


What Comes Next - Part II/V

by Persephone



Series: Willing to Take the Risk [27]
Category: Valentine's Day (2010)
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:27:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone/pseuds/Persephone
Summary: Lunch in Bel Air, and a game of memory.
Relationships: Sean Jackson/Holden Wilson
Series: Willing to Take the Risk [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/12943
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

Cecelia’s invitation for her lunch on Sunday came in a noticeably odd way. Glancing briefly from his laptop screen to his phone, lit up next to it, he scanned the message without showing any reaction.

Still, Allison gave him a big, “Uh-oh.”

He looked back into the laptop screen, eyebrows raised. “Uh-oh what? You can see what I’m looking at?”

“No,” she said, drawing out the word while stabbing at her vinaigrette-soaked garden salad. The remarkable quantity of salad dressing was likely a compromise with Kay, who diligently opposed Allison losing even an ounce of body fat. A fact he’d nearly lost a hand discovering when he’d thought to get Allison “in shape” for her wedding and Kay had bared her teeth at him. A decade older now, he totally got it. Tall, slender Kay was all about those curves. Although he’d figured it out on getting a hot look at their erotic boudoir engagement photos.

If only heaven would smile on him likewise. Erotic would be phenomenal, any at all would be welcome. Judging from the way Holden had wrinkled his nose at the topic though, he was assuming that asterisk he’d then covertly marked next to the item might be as far as it would go.

That, engagement photos, the night after that . . . party across the water, was what his heart wanted to tell him was important to be contemplating right now.

“I _can’t_ see your phone. But every time I’ve seen that look on your face, it’s been Holden related. So nowadays I just uh-oh in advance. Don’t snort at me,” she said around a mouthful of salad when he had. “You’re a flashing billboard over anything to do with Holden. You should charge ad dollars.”

“Is that right? So what am I flashing now? What’s on my phone that you’re seeing so clearly on my face.”

Through the Skype widow, Allison smiled broadly with her sealed lips. Swallowing, she nodded, said, “Holden’s sent a text. He loves you and he’s very sorry. I have no idea why, probably he doesn’t either, but . . . that should cover everything. Plus, you can’t leave him now anyway, goes the text, because he’s been to your momma’s house and eaten her chocolate chip cookies.”

“Well, hell.”

“And,” she said, laughing with her mouth closed. “He’s met your sweet little niece, seen your pop’s garage full of unfinished projects, and hung out climbing into bedroom windows and doing God knows what else with your best bud.”

“There was no what else.”

“And last but certainly not least, he’s already been adopted into the family by your older and much more intelligent sisters. So case closed, really.”

“All that from a text, huh.”

“Yup,” she said, raising her gaze to someone offscreen calling her name. Allison was at work, eating lunch in her office so they could chat. “Oh my gosh, yes!” she suddenly called toward the door, beckoning wildly. “Come say hi! Sean, say hi to everyone at work!”

Next thing, the screen was crammed with faces, all calling out hellos. Smiling, recognizing a few, he lifted a hand. Allison called from a corner of the screen, “Good thing you’re dressed, huh?”

Laughter, a chorus of goodbyes, and they were trooping out again, with someone calling out something about seeing him at the wedding party. Allison took center stage again, twisting open an aluminum water bottle.

“What was that about a wedding party,” he asked.

“No idea. But yes, one hundred percent, all that from a text.”

“But why would he send the text in the first place?” he asked, mostly just fishing for intel now. “We’re not fighting. Matter of fact, we’re getting married pretty soon.”

“Why indeed.”

He watched her knowing, smiling face, waiting for him to say it.

“He’s called you guys, hasn’t he?”

“He has.”

“What’d he—” but his heart had kicked, making him pause a second. “What’d he say?”

“He says he thinks you’re cute,” she replied, drawing out the words like a teenager. “And hopes you’ll call him, and ask him to the prom.”

Momentarily turning away, he covered his mouth and feigned scratching his beard, only then realizing how nervous he’d been for his family to know something was wrong. But of course, Holden wanted that even less than he did.

Glancing at the screen, blushing, because that last part had also sounded really good, he answered her. “Tell him I think he’s cute too. And that I said yes to prom.”

Still smiling, Allison shook her head. “I cannot with your gay drama, Sean Jackson. Okay, gotta split. But . . . you’re sure you’re okay? You kinda look like . . . you got sacked on an easy play.”

Locking his jaw to keep from telling her anything, he told her he was fine. 

Staring at him through the bright, colorful screen, she saw everything. Of course she did. She’d been seeing all of him since he was a child. Not about the things that went on in the league, no one knew those things, but she’d spent the last few years watching him struggling with this part of his life. She saw, but she was going to let him do it at his own pace. She always had. He knew, when it came to family, no one was luckier than him.

“All right,” she said indulgently. “Answer the text. And remember to be kind. Love you, kiddo.”

“I love you too, Allison.”

The Skype window closed, and with a determined breath, he reached for his phone. Looked at the text from Alastair.

_Ce’s lunch is noon on Sunday. Plus lawn games! Looking forward to seeing you. PS. Don’t forget to bring my son._

He didn’t even bother to give the text a dirty look. Just wondered how long Alastair could manage keeping up the good spirits. Guess he’d know Sunday.

But it was he began replying, that sure thing and looking forward to seeing him too, that his instincts, the ones that kicked in on an incoming blindside, blipped. _Took them long enough._

It had him slowing, more carefully rereading the text, unsure why he had just thought that.

•


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, okay . . ._ he thought, taking in Petey’s wide, pleased smile. Seemed he’d done at least this part of it right. It looked like putting Sean on his social calendar had wrapped up satisfactorily enough for Petey, who looked as easy and as wound down as he hadn’t seen in quite a while.

Back inside Geffen HQ’s overblown cafeteria, he and Petey were having a lunch he assumed was the closing bracket to the one that had started the whole chapter, preceding even their latte drenched meeting on Geffen’s balcony days later. Both times of teeth-pulling for Petey, but the tone entirely different now.

Back when he had thought it made sense to go into marriage by avoiding any close inspection of his behavior for three years. How well had that worked out for him.

The cafeteria was teeming with people, and this time he made an effort to smile and wave at people, remembering how Petey had scolded him the last time for failing to notice that people came down specially whenever he came in, implying he chose to bury his head in the sand when it suited him. That still smarted. Especially after three awful weeks of facing it to be exactly true. 

It hardly seemed possible that life could alter so much in so short a time. Incredible, even three weeks ago, how oblivious and entitled he had been. Believing he was about to enter marriage and all he had to do was keep blinders on Sean and lead him along until they crossed some imaginary line. Prevent Sean from looking right or left and seeing the extent to which he had . . . abused and broken his trust. And get them where, exactly? When he, the cause of it all, would be right there on the other side of that line with Sean. Right there, and unconfessed.

Petey, anyway, appeared pleased by it all, giving him very sweet smiles and making him feel pretty good. Something he definitely needed and appreciated. Particularly when Geffen, meantime, was still smiling indifferently down at him from his portrait on the wall. Perhaps awaiting the final blow. An “engagement party” he was hoping this time to wrangle details from a happier, more amenable Petey.

“Holden, I am so very proud of you. You _did_ it. Everything we asked, you did. Every venue, every function. I honestly didn’t expect this level of success. And by all accounts, it was _all_ success. Sean in every part of your private social world is now official and complete. It’s like daylight from the dark days of the Thurgood Dinner and just trying to get you to _listen._ If TMZ wants, they can come _now_ for a comment.”

“Please, don’t even joke about that.”

Petey laughed. “Listen, _I’ve_ already expressed my absolute respect for you having preferred Sean over your rogue’s gallery of ex-boyfriends, but I think most importantly, you now also realize that you can no longer look at Sean and see someone you think you can manipulate.”

“What?” he said, looking up from his pesto salad. “I never thought—“

“Holden, you did!”

He closed his mouth.

“You thought,” Petey said, methodically consuming his eggplant whatever that was, “that Sean was like the rest of them. That you could fly your prince and heir to the empire banner and Sean would fall in line, panting to go feast in the halls of Alastair and Cecelia Wilson just as long as he stood here, didn’t look over there. I’ve only been telling you _forever_ that he’s not like that.”

He continued to listen to what Petey was saying. Having been truly humbled by his experiences these past few weeks, he listened.

“And I’m just so proud of you for being brave. He deserves that, Holden. Nothing less.”

He was nodding, feeling miserably and so deeply words Petey himself, naturally gifted at assembling and guiding grown men, yet probably only skimmingly understood emotionally.

“We won, Holden,” Petey said, almost aglow. “Now you’re free to get married without some blowhard hovering in your airspace.” And with a big smile, “Congratulations!”

“Thank you, Petey,” he said humbly. “And listen, I just wanna say, thank you with all my heart. I know how much time and effort you put into creating us a calendar. You were absolutely right that we were letting guys I dated win, and that it was unacceptable. So thank you for keeping at me. I really do apologize for being a total pain and having to make you practically run me aground.”

“TMZ did that.”

“Right. But you were there to really put things in context for me. You were right that I’d wasted a year after Sean’s coming out, after our engagement was made public, to set the story for the media. I was going through so much—you know, with him, personally— that I completely failed to see what it must have looked like from the outside. How it must have looked like Sean and I only met after he came out, all that. You’re absolutely right that it only served to diminish the seriousness of our relationship.”

“And lost you valuable time as a philanthropy power—“

“And lost us valuable time as a philanthropy power couple, both in our community and to the outside,” Petey was nodding, “which in turn affected Sean’s public standing, both as an icon in the NFL . . . and as my fiancé.”

Finished, he tightened his lips, waiting. Petey continued eating. “You’re a wonder, Petey,” he concluded.

Petey ignored him. But Petey was having to do it with effort. “I’m gonna come kiss you,” he said, rising and leaning over their table, kissing the corner of Petey’s mouth while Petey fairly bloomed with pleasure.

“Sit down, Holden,” Petey whispered, sweeping a look over him. He did, smiling.

“I also wanted you to know, Petey, that Ten particularly meant something special to him.” He’d sat down and was back to eating for a few moments before it registered that Petey hadn’t responded. He looked up to see a most delighted look on Petey’s face.

“It did?”

He nodded. “Remember you complained about his never having been out in West Hollywood? That whole gripe about the club in Des Moines? Well, I honestly don’t think it had ever occurred to him either. I mean, he came out and it was one media thing after the other. Not exactly the normal trajectory. And I think Ten being his first time in a gay bar was really special. So thank you.”

He’d been chomping the absurdly delicious almond pesto salad for a while before realizing that Petey hadn’t spoken. He looked over to see Petey’s transported expression, eyes locked on him.

“Did you say it was his first time in a gay bar?”

“I know, right?”

“Holden, I didn’t know,” Petey nearly wailed, leaning forward. “I— would have— I don’t know— Ten? We— we could have done so much better!”

“No, it was perfect. I think anything more or less would have come off as totally stagey.”

“But— even at Ten we could have— Holden, the hashtags alone—!”

“It’s fine. Trust me, low-key was the way to go.”

“There’s nothing low-key about that! That would have trended for the entire day!”

He just nodded, maintaining a contented expression until Petey’s killer publicist win at all costs instincts saw and believed that it had been better as it had happened, began settling back down. 

Petey inhaled delicately, releasing his knife to place a hand to his chest. “Oh my God,” Petey said, delicately. “Could he get more perfect.”

Now reddish brown all over, lashes fluttering as he clearly harnessed cavorting thoughts, Petey sent him a look. “Holden,” now said softly, apologetically. “I was a mess throughout. I could barely handle being in his presence. I’m _so sorry_ about that.”

“You were fine.”

“I wasn’t,” Petey said helplessly, looking like the kid he practically was. “I wanted to . . . explode half the time. I’m much better now, but— I— I promise I’ll be over it before the wedding.”

“You don’t have to be over it.” And as Petey blinked his black eyes at him, “We’re all fucked in love, right?” he said, quoting him back.

Petey’s face broke into a wide smile, followed by an open, happy laugh of the type he really hadn’t heard in a while. 

Then leaving his knife once more, and taking a big breath, Petey leaned forward on the table, chin in hand. “Holden, how do you _do_ it? His _eyes._ Oh God, he looks at you and it’s as if . . . it’s just you and him left on the planet. Like he could— take you apart, and then so lovingly put you back together again, and you’d be so much _better_ for it.” Petey breathed, smiled hesitantly at him. “I mean, look what he did to you. Holden, he _tamed_ you.”

He ate, saying nothing. Listening. Then, because Petey apparently expected an answer, “You’ll get no arguments here.”

“It’s no wonder you’ve been a mess yourself.” Then Petey laughed, so joyously. “I was so worried all this time, wondering why you were such a mess. But it’s a miracle you can even _talk._ ”

He said nothing, letting Petey live.

“And your dating history. That’s so obvious too now. I’m laughing because it’s just _so_ obvious. You were so clearly trying not to get hitched in dating those . . . troglodytes.” Petey laughed. “I mean, _Paxton?_ ”

“Was it really that bad?” he quietly asked, because it was truly painful wondering what Sean might be thinking. If it had been so incomprehensible for Petey who was— not alien to their social world. “I don’t mean— I mean, I know what you said about having to field their calls—“

“Are you asking me or Sean? Holden, it was bad for everyone. Now it’s obvious that you were choosing men you knew you could never fall in love with. And if I do the math for the men we saw you with _during_ the time you were dating Sean—“

“I was never with anyone _while_ I was with Sean—“

“—then it becomes even more glaring what you were doing,” Petey concluded, without acknowledging his statement. “I’m still laughing because I’m just so relieved. All these years I couldn’t understand how someone as completely irresistible and all heart as you could be dating those terrors. And look, I do _not_ discount that you are Cecelia and Alastair’s offspring and that shark is in your DNA. But Holden, babe, you are nothing but love and sexiness, while your men were . . .” and Petey paused in his rant.

With a tip of his head, Petey said to him, “A calculation. And you know, that never so much as occurred to me.”

He was completely without words.

Sean too would have to reach the same conclusion, right? Everything Petey had just said. Because he had given Sean more information, more detail, more explanation than Petey had. Sean had to see how . . . _meaningless_ his relationships had been before him.

“The universe loves you, babe. Because in spite of all you did,” and he looked at Petey because Petey was looking right at him, “it still gave you Sean. God’s gift.” Petey lifted a finger from his knife. “And please don’t argue with that assessment.”

“Never.”

Petey gave him a sexy smile. “I _was_ gonna die though Raven Night. He was so _upset._ I was way the hell back, but Holden, I could feel his _wrath._ ” Petey paused, swallowing, gathering himself. And he found himself wondering whether sometimes he looked like Petey did now—far off and bludgeoned. “And it made me— well, it made me very upset as well,” Petey finished more firmly.

“Yeah,” he segued, rooting for a possible hot piece of gossip. “I noticed you that night of Paxton going at Bryan with a Y.”

Petey waved a dismissive hand. “Bryan was being annoying.”

“I’ll bet . . .” 

“But all is well.”

He looked up. “You’re back together?”

“We’re not _together,_ he’s straight. But I did have to push back that night because, _God._ There’s Sean upset, and there’s Bryan making it all about him.”

“Well, word is, a nice handjob in an expensive hotel hot tub usually calms frayed nerves.”

“Haha.”

“So . . .” he pressed, already tingling to update Craig and Elliot. “Did you?”

“No, Holden. I was busy being worried about Sean. And you.” Cutting and daintily forking a piece of grilled eggplant into his mouth, Petey then lowered his lashes and smiled sweetly at him. “Raven Night, I was _really_ worried about you.”

“Why?” he asked dismissively, then when Petey hadn’t answered, looked looked up. “Why?” he repeated, at Petey’s flushed face.

“Well, he got . . . wound up, and I got . . . you know . . . concerned for both your. . . physical well-being.”

He frowned, affronted. “Why would you get concerned about my physical well-being because Sean got angry. You think that Sean would— what, get physical with me? Are you serious?”

There was a long tail of silence, during which Petey was smiling, eating, blushing. Then Petey tipped his head, caught his eye. “Have I said I liked drunk you?”

He blinked. And Petey, all perfect brows, wide lips, eyes and hair, gave him a look that was both somehow liquid and marble-hard.

“Just stop,” he said, disbelieving that he had been that forthcoming, wasted or no.

“You stop. Or should I say, don’t stop. Don’t _ever_ stop with those details.”

“You’re full of it,” he said, refusing to fall for it, but praying anyway for a plague of amnesia among his friends and anyone able to bear witness to whatever had been so uncontrollably spilling from him last winter. _That_ was the last time he was going to trigger a sexual odyssey and then shut it off mid-stroke.

And for a while they ate in silence. Their server came, and he ordered more sourdough.

“Listen, Petey,” he said, flicking another quick look at Geffen’s smiling portrait. “Um . . . you need to tell me what your boss is planning.”

“Why? You don’t pay my salary.”

“Well, I think because there should be no more surprises.”

“There’s always room for surprise.”

“Yeah, but a surprise engagement party? After everything, you think it’s a great idea to spring _one more_ surprise package on Sean?”

Petey let out a shallow, trembling breath, in a clear release of sexual energy. “Holden, I’m not telling you a thing. Let it go. Craig and I have it under control.”

“Wait, Craig knows?”

“Of course he does.”

He frowned as a thought flashed across his mind, like something had come together and then passed, something he felt already aware of. But it wasn’t gelling. So he looked again at Petey, tried a more direct plea. “Don’t you think that Sean deserves a break? For all this to end?”

Petey smiled. “It’s over, Holden, and we won. It’s going to be smooth sailing from here. Besides, he looked well enough last night. And I mean he looked _well_ last night. I think he’s adjusted fine.”

He had food in his mouth. So first he stopped chewing. Then swallowed. Then he stared at Petey. “Who’re we talking about?”

“Sean Jackson,” Petey said softly, as if saying the password into a secret sex club. “Who’re _you_ talking about?”

“Where would you have seen him last night?”

“At Bernal’s of course.”

He blinked at Petey.

“With Craig.”

He wasn’t sure what had just happened inside him, he could only term it a silent, seismic burst.

What the fuck had he just heard?

“Sean didn’t tell you?”

“I haven’t seen him since Tuesday night,” he said on automatic, saying more than he would have intended. “We— haven’t been— I’ve been waiting for him to call.”

Petey straightened, his brow tightening. “Huh?”

And he had seen Craig that morning at the office. Craig had mentioned nothing about going out with Sean the night before. And— had Petey actually said _Bernal’s?_

—

Craig was leaving the office early to catch a flight to New York.

“I’ll be back in time for Cecelia’s lunch,” Craig was saying, at his desk slotting bound reports into his brief. “Elliot and I have gone over a few things. So you’re covered. He can fill you in later. Either way, just leave your folks to us, Holden. I think we can at least take some of the pressure off you and Sean.”

Barely hearing a word, he was instead watching Craig’s every move, trying to see some kind of body language tipoff as to why the hell Craig had said nothing about where the hell he had taken Sean the night before, because what the hell was Craig talking if not about Bernal’s?

It was useless of course, trying to suss someone whose professional output relied on a poker face, never mind when it was a natural state of being.

“How was last night,” he finally interrupted. As causally as blurting out a thought could go.

Craig began smiling. To himself. Over there.

“Had a pretty good time.”

 _He’d_ had a pretty good time, or _we’d_ had a pretty good time? He hadn’t caught it.

After more awkward silence, hoping the moment might register with Craig, then as Craig continued packing, wondering why he’d thought that, he said, “And Sean? Did— he have a good time?”

Craig didn’t immediately answer, checking his collection of reports against a printed list, thus taking a year off his life. “He’s into food?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

Craig nodded. “I think he enjoyed the food.”

And nothing else.

He remained where he was, by the office entrance. Certainly not out of questions, but suddenly seeing himself sitting at that very desk over there, asking Craig a favor.

 _Please hold him for me,_ he had begged. No matter how bad it got, he had put it to Craig to make sure Sean was still here when they emerged from a tunnel he couldn’t see light from. That him, that back against the wall, true him, had known what it was doing in putting Craig in the drivers seat over Sean. Without question, as a precaution against this him.

Craig zipped his brief, sliding it off his desk then turning to him. When Craig didn’t move, only raised an eyebrow at him, he realized he was blocking the exit, and moved aside.

Smiling, Craig started over. “He’s in once piece, chief. Just hang in there.”

“No, yeah. I’m good.”

By him at the door, Craig paused, turning to him. “You did good, Holden. And I’d say hi to New York for you… but it seemed those days really are over.” Craig’s smile widened. “I remember like it was a minute ago you showing up here, after days of missing in action, with an iceberg the size of the Titanic on your finger. I thought I’d been whacked in the head. But you know… now after having spent time with him, I get why you chose to keep it all such a secret. Step by step, chief. We’re almost there.”

Unsure of how to respond, he simply nodded his thanks, still wondering whether to push on the Bernal matter.

Instead he nodded more firmly, stepping aside so Craig could exit his office, calling to his secretary that he’d be in touch from the flight. The young man nodding, standing up as he followed behind Craig. “Mr. Wilson…”

“Yeah, I know,” he answered, to the message Rachel must have passed on wondering where he was. “Tell them I’m on my way.”

He parted ways with Craig outside the suite’s entrance, remaining for a moment longer. Then, simply summoning the willpower, left to proceed with his own day. Petey was completely right. They had won.

Plus, he’d prayed last night.

•


	3. Chapter 3

They were in Mr. Lazarov’s waiting room, there to get final judgements on his tailor’s post-slashing and burning of his and Elliot’s wedding week attire selections. Hopefully, Mr. Lazarov had moved past his an initial sniffing and side-eyeing of their submissions, since he didn’t believe that between them he and Elliot could have gone _that_ far astray on clothing choices. Still, he’d understood the tailor’s slighted feelings as point taken. Mr. Lazarov had only been gently prodding for months that he’d love to make his wedding tux, only to have their short list of tailors point right back to the man. 

Now, fabrics, linings and threads arrived, they were awaiting expert guidance to begin initial fittings. Once inside he’d be sure to express his humility and gratitude and make sure that Mr. Lazarov saw: lessoned learned.

His new mantra for life.

They were also half an hour early at the shop. He’d needed to get out of the office after the whole Craig and Bernal thing and had eventually done so after mid-afternoon meetings had cleared. Rachel, casually watching him return from the conference room and try to work under that colossal distraction, has finally suggested that he wrap up early for the day. Preoccupied as he’d been trying not to visualize what Sean might have seen on those colorfully lit decks, particularly that stone one facing the water, Rachel’s prompt had come like a suggestion from a different dimension.

“It’s your wedding we’re talking about, Mr. Wilson,” she said. “Relax. Go out and enjoy yourself with Mr. Manassian. Have yourself a good time planning for the big day.”

Rachel was almost seventy and had been secretary to his father. Childless and unmarried for decades from an emotionally abusive ex-husband, she never called him by his first name nor reacted emotionally to anything whatsoever. She was basically the senior vice president of calm-the-fuck-down at Wilson Realty.

So he had taken her advice and gotten out of there. And coasting on his best man status for weeks already, Elliot had been able to leave the firm early as well.

Right then he was catching Elliot up on his dinner with Ev Nielsen and Ev asking about cold feet.

“That’s what Alastair and Cecelia hope is happening right now,” he said softly. “That I’m getting cold feet. It’s what this lunch is about, guaranteed. That I woke up this morning and realized I was doing something utterly ludicrous in going forward with marrying Sean instead of someone they prefer. That I’ll somehow save them a last ditch effort of trying to get rid of Sean. It’s infuriating, their distrust of him, their pervasive _disbelief_ that I can make it work.” He turned away, looking at the wallpaper and covering a skipped, frightened heartbeat. “Whatever.”

He looked around the waiting room. Then remembered. “Oh, thanks, by the way.”

“What for?”

“For doing Alastair’s dirty work in dragging Sean through a dog and pony show. I mean I know it had to be done but Alastair didn’t have to be involved. I’m still so pissed for Sean. That he gets called up there like . . . some . . . employee.”

“Why, you’re welcome. You made a good master of ceremonies, and Sean the perfect guest of honor.”

He was quiet, taking in the yellow ochre brocade wallpaper, vaguely wondering when Lazarov had had it put in. “What did he say to you last night?” he asked Elliot. “When you went over.”

“About what?” And when he didn’t answer, not caring to play along, Elliot shrugged. “Nothing about Sean, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“And you don’t think that’s weird. That he sends Sean on this voyage of discovery of his son’s past misdeeds— oh, and _you_ made a good cruise director, if you’re keeping tally— and then he asks no follow up questions. From anyone. Nobody thinks that’s weird.”

“I think he presumes you’re both adults and can figure things out.”

He took a breath to say more but clamped his lips when his heart bumped.

“Why’re you so tense?” Elliot asked, glancing at him, and he couldn’t even deny it. “Oh, wait. That must mean he still hasn’t called. Actually, these days I can just look at you and tell.”

“Wow, you can tell tension on me?”

“I can tell when he hasn’t had a pass at you. You don’t look as, uh, honestly? You don’t look as cute as after.”

It worked, he snorted laughter a little.

“H, the hard part’s over,” Elliot said evenly. “And there wasn’t even a big reveal. Sean isn’t leaving you any more than you’re leaving him. Just let him lick his wounded pride and then we can all get on with the wedding.”

He was silent, looking at his hands. It was mostly true.

So why was he terrified. Why was he sitting there partially trying to clean from his mind the sight of Foley, weeks back, sitting where Elliot was now and looking into his eyes as if to say, _What are you doing? It’s not even about us, what are you, Holden, doing?_

As if he could hear Foley’s unspoken words. _Marriage? You?_

So much so that he hadn’t told Elliot any of the things his father had said to him that night of the TMZ publication when he’d gone into Bel Air to see him. His father, linking up their approach to relationships as if identical. It still burned remembering.

Neither did Elliot actually know how he had conducted himself with Sean. He didn’t know why, but he still couldn’t tell Elliot. He just knew it hurt his heart when he thought of telling him. It already hurt so much that Elliot had repeated about him cheating on Sean, with Petey simply stating it as fact.

“Craig says you’re going early on Sunday,” he said.

“Craig is correct. He and I talked over his concerns that Cecelia might still invite any one of your exes just to throw a wrench in the works. I’m therefore to arrive early, and while not actually kill any of them with the audacity to show up, to at least get rid of them before Sean does. But honestly, I don’t think she has. Cecelia’s not that unsubtle.”

“Oh, right. She was really subtle when she sent out wedding announcements. Just because she didn’t want people thinking something was wrong our engagement.” Stopping himself, he abandoned that line of thought before it cascaded and aggravated him. “Anyway as long as she didn’t invite Darren to come weep his ridiculous fake tears into her iced tea.”

“Oh, it’s my deepest wish that he shows up. I did hear that Neil’s also been seen occupying her table at functions these days. And did you at any time date a guy named Quinn Gordon? Also lately seen refreshing Cecelia’s drinks as resolutely.”

It was unbelievable. _They_ were taken aback that he was getting married. He was again thankful that after Raven Night he’d deleted and blocked so many of their numbers. He could only imagine the foolishness he would have been reading by now.

“You know what, I don’t even care. If she or Alastair prefers any of them, they’re free to marry them. He’s only got about a year left in his contract with Beau so it wouldn’t cost him that much to just breach and compensate accordingly, and she’s single. Works out for both of them.”

Knowing bravado when he heard it, Elliot didn’t answer. Which disturbed him a little, making him send a quick glance Elliot’s way. Not having remarks meant Elliot possibly shared some of Craig’s worry— that his parents were still signaling to the outside world that the position of son-in-law still in fact remained unfilled.

“I wouldn’t worry about yesterday’s trash,” Elliot said looking over as the doors to the private fitting rooms opened and Mr. Lazarov’s young, ever smiling assistant lifted a finger to indicate just a little longer. Elliot nodded and the assistant vanished back into the fitting rooms. “They’re in desperado territory now because they know it’s over.”

“It’s _been_ over.”

“I know,” Elliot said softly. Then was quiet for a long while, before saying, “You know, I think this last week and a half of it just being you and Sean in a corner was really helpful. It was actually really good seeing you two out in public but just being in your own world. I know you weren’t having a ball, but I think it established a good boundary within your public life for a more . . . private space, you know?”

He shrugged, shaking his head.

Elliot too was quiet. “Anyway, I’m sure Sunday’s just about wedding updates.”

“Right. Because they need us for that.”

Elliot let it go. Then, after another moment, gently, “So did they tell you where they took Sean last night?”

“Where, Bernal’s?”

And a look passed across Elliot’s face as if to say, see, such a thing had happened and the world hadn’t ended, so clearly they were right to expose Sean to everything. 

Whereas there was everything and there was . . . that. What had been the _point_ of that? But he couldn’t ask. Because you didn’t ask Craig to handle something and then dog his footsteps. Especially since Craig had already smilingly given him a warning shot across the bow.

“I would have murdered to have been there,” Elliot said softly. “Craig is such a bitch, he didn’t even let me know.”

Itching to pick at the subject, he asked, “Why was Petey there?” Petey who considered escort clubs and parties strictly for ethically challenged whoremongers. Differentiated somehow in his head from Dutch brothels.

“Petey told me he dreamt the night before that Sean cornered him in one of Bernal’s bedrooms— the one with the blue lights and mirrors— and started speaking to him in Spanish. Next thing, Sean had him up against the wall, licking his nipples and giving him a handjob. Petey said he vibrated awake with an orgasm. So he cancelled his dinner date and went.”

Well, he’d asked. Defeated, he just chose to leave that mess where he’d found it. “What was Sean saying to him in Spanish? Did he say?”

“No me hables de amor,” Elliot said. “Don’t speak to me of love.”

He had asked. “But, seriously. Am I safe?”

Elliot laughed a little.

“Who was he on a date with?” he asked. “Don’t tell me Bryan.”

Elliot shook his head, picking up a catalog from the small table between them. “Some closeted actor.”

He knew which one. Petey told them all the time but Elliot never retained. “That’s great,” he said quietly, facing forward. “I’m glad everyone’s having a good time.”

But unable to contain his nervousness, “Did Craig—“

“He did not.”

He stared at Elliot. “You know what I was going to say?”

“I do.”

He watched Elliot leaf through the catalog. “So, is he—“

“Craig is handling his side of things,” Elliot said, turning a page. “You know, I seem to remember, going into KV’s party, you saying something about meaning to be all zen from now on. I remember you getting dressed and going,” and here Elliot lowered his voice in what he supposed was meant to be a dramatic, breathier version of his own. “I’m tired of the games, Elliot. I love him and I’m going to tell him everything, and let whatever happens happen.”

He looked away, back at the walls he couldn’t remember having changed colors. After a moment he said, “Since I’ve never starred in an episode of daytime TV, I’m pretty sure I never said that.”

“And I said,” Elliot continued without breaking stride. “I dunno, H, everything is _a lot._ ”

Which Elliot absolutely hadn’t, but why interrupt a good thing.

“But I had you back, so I said that’s the spirit, young man. You stay strong and beautiful and you’ll come out of this a shining star. And here we are.”

Here indeed. And were he any farther from being a shining star, he’d be Satan himself.

“Do you also remember talking about gaps?” he asked.

Elliot was silent, leafing on. “You got past that.”

“Did I?”

Elliot didn’t answer him. And he left it, just relieved to have finished filling in those wretched gaps. 

Or he tried to anyway. Turning back to Elliot, “Did Bernal say anything?”

“He said he nearly passed out when Sean spoke to him. I have always said,” Elliot said, concedingly, “that man of yours _is_ hot.”

“Oh, is that what you’ve always said about him.”

“Hush.”

Elliot turned a page. Then said, “Hey, so follow up question. Did you finally find out what made him so skittish? Remember, after our encounter at Elementals I said he must have seen or experienced something to get like that?” 

And at his complete silence, because he was being gut punched all over again seeing Sean on KV’s patio, dragging up the words, _Because I saw,_ “H?”

He turned and looked at Elliot. “Hush.”

Elliot snorted, returned to his catalog.

Then the door to the waiting room opened, and Foley entered.

Not quite. Stood frozen at the door, eyes widening on seeing them.

Elliot was between them, in the wing chair between him and the door. Elliot didn’t know Foley, but when Foley remained where he was, mouth slowly opening but no words coming out, Elliot’s eyes went from Foley to him, then back again, and Elliot firmly lowered the catalog back to the side table.

“Okay,” Elliot said brightly, finger stuck up at Foley. “You’re gonna have to wait out there. In the showroom. There are chairs.”

Foley blinked a few times, at Elliot then at him, trying to find his composure, and then simply retreated, the door quietly clicking shut behind him.

“Fuck me,” Elliot breathed dramatically, tilting his head at the ceiling. “Just . . . fuck me.”

The door on his side opened and the assistant was once more smiling at them. “Mr. Lazarov is ready for you now.”

He was up and heading for that door before the words were fully out of the assistant’s mouth.

—

“So we’re done? Like done? After Bernal’s everything’s been told?”

“Well, I _hope_ you told him everything,” Elliot countered.

“I did. I did.”

“Then you’re all set. And congratulations, consider yourself ahead of most engaged couples. You’ve come fully clean with your partner _before_ your wedding.”

He was nodding, probably more seriously than Elliot had intended the lightheartedness.

“We’ll go over your Soirée checklists tomorrow,” Elliot said. “But it’ll have to be on FaceTime as I have to run straight to Covent House after and I don’t want to have to come all the way back from Century City. Beyond that, rest up for Sunday, okay? Look good for your man. And Holden, seriously, leave your parents to us. We mean it. It’s getting to crunch time and you can’t be getting into fights with your dad anymore.”

He nodded again, stomach tightening as the days lessened to seeing Sean again. About to speak, he squashed it.

“What?” Elliot asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” And at Elliot’s continued stare, “I— I guess I’m just nervous to see him again.”

“How, H?” Elliot said flatly. “What’s there to be nervous about? At this point there are porn stars doing porn scenes on a set full of people hiding more secrets between them than you two. There’s nothing left for him to know or see about you.”

He actually flinched. But not too badly, because Elliot’s brow barely pinched. Just a tiny skipped moment in which Elliot’s eyes registered his reaction.

Nodding a quick, final time, he said, “See you Sunday,” and turning for his Lexus, parked across from Elliot’s Jaguar in the tiny parking lot behind Mr. Lazarov’s shop, he pretended not to see the pinch in Elliot’s brow deepen. Or to recognize it to be the same look from the Peninsula. He strode quickly for his Lexus.

—

“Sean Jackson?”

“You got him.”

“Hi, it’s Monica from Harry Winston. Are we still on your books for Monday afternoon?”

“Oh, hell yeah.”

The receptionist laughed.

“You got something good for me, sis?”

She laughed some more. “Yes, Sean, we definitely do. Your wedding rings are here, and it would be our pleasure to show them to you. Is 4pm still okay?”

“Yes it is.”

“Aaron will be ready. See you then.”

The call ended, and out on his bedroom patio, he actually went right into his messages to text Holden, to tease him that the especially round and gold things had arrived, and wouldn’t he like to see it with him in a darkened room with a lock, when he suddenly realized what he was doing. And lowered his hand.

He set his phone on the patio table, among his Soirée binders and checklists and Oprah questions, waiting for his heart to slow. Which reminded him, and he picked up his phone again to double check that he had in fact deleted Jonah Wright’s text about Bendis being in LA. In fact he stood there wondering whether he had actually received such a text at all. What were the chances, he thought now, that both Kevin Bendis and Jim Liniker were in LA at the same time as this coming interview?

 _Who cares,_ he thought, putting the phone back down. Those men had long ceased being his problem. He took a seat at the table, opened his laptop to check the order of his homework for the day.

The previous night after that shock of a party, coming home and falling asleep, it was to the most realistic dreams he had ever had. Of being supplanted by several assholes, whom he’d found himself stuck in line behind in the dream, struggling to just see to the front of the line. Dreams that had had him waking up with tears in his eyes.

What did it matter that he didn’t understand him. He knew better. _Life_ was what came next, and he’d find the strength for it. He always had.

_You’ve deserved him. Just call him. Go see rings together._

But he didn’t budge.

And then, just like that, it came to him. Why Alastair’s text had blipped his radar. Why his face had looked like a flashing billboard of worry. 

The mode of invitation was off. 

All last summer Cecelia had had him parading through cocktails and parties and everything else, and for each invitation, she’d simply call or text. The last time she had done this, let Alastair do the reaching out, had brought him face with a prenup.

He stood there aimlessly shifting documents around, trying to bring his mind back to work. So it wasn’t going to be just Holden’s friends getting instructions anymore. Alastair and Cecelia were getting off the sidelines and into the game. There were just too many red flags on the field, he supposed. Too many unsanctioned moves and foul plays.

Now was when he and Holden should become extra careful. Buckle down on their side. Instead here he was in his house, having banished Holden to his, turning over a relationship they had spent six months doing everything to save. Struggling just to assure himself that they had indeed been having one and same relationship all along.

Ready or not, though, it was game time. And like any game worth its name, he was pretty sure it kicked off Sunday.

•


	4. Chapter 4

Elliot arrived at his mother’s house early, while she was still getting ready for her lunch, and in the casual way Elliot could with his mother, asked who her guests were for the afternoon. She spilled that it was just them, a couple friends of hers, and his father.

Occupied in front of the mirror in his dressing room, reading Elliot’s text, he felt relief wash through him, only then realizing that he’d been holding his breath. He really had been fearing a Darren and Quinn Gordon, and maybe even Foley at this point, afternoon surprise. Maybe his mother had resigned herself to having Sean for a son-in-law after all.

Why he’d thought such a thing was beyond him, knowing his mother wasn’t one for loose ends. A week later he’d be kicking himself for not having seen the obvious recon mission that had been the lunch.

But at the moment he was trying to decide whether to change his clothes. He looked fine, but maybe he could look better. It had been days after all, and there was no downside to giving Sean a seriously pleasing visual. The mere thought that he’d soon be getting some tongue was enough for him to be thankful for his anti-perspirant.

There was still some time before Sean was expected in Bel Air though, meanwhile he still wasn’t convinced that peppermint was his color. The fit of the pants were exceptional, so he’d bought one in a burnt orange as well, but now he wondered whether either color made sense. His shirt was fine, his belt was fine, and he was looking down at his chest hair wondering whether he should do up or undo another button when his phone buzzed. Checking it, he read that his dad had arrived but that beyond asking generally how everyone was, had still not said anything more.

That had him slipping his phone into his pocket and heading out of there. Elliot was acting like his dad not asking anyone how anything had gone was normal. If it was, why would Alastair have bothered insisting that he tell Sean details. His dad was waiting for something, he just didn’t yet know what. But he suspected they’d find out at lunch.

—

“You’re here early,” Elliot said as he crossed the sliding doors threshold onto his mother’s garden patio.

“And you still don’t think this is weird.”

Elliot said nothing. Poised at a large elmwood farm table on which hors d’oeuvres were arrayed on warmers, Elliot was busy raiding appetizers. Cover held aloft, Elliot had located a cache of caramelized onion bulbs and was steadily making them disappear into his mouth.

A short distance away at the center of the patio sat a companion table, that one maplewood, on which earthenware had been place-set for their lunch. Flanking it, two long cushioned benches sat gleaming in the sunshine. The reclaimed farm tables were a passion project of his mother’s, which she occasionally donated to charity. Both appeared newly finished and looked gorgeous. He had to admit she had done a fantastic job.

“Elliot,” he said. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.”

Cocktail toothpicking away at sides, Elliot took his time. Then munching away, murmured, “Damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t. Life and fatherhood for Alastair Wilson, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Where is he?”

“Over by the statue of the reading girl.”

And as he turned to look at what wasn’t actually visible from the patio, Elliot said:

“An uncle in the de Mevius family introduced Alastair to a fine young man at dinner the other evening. With remarks that, though he had enjoyed the Forbes article, had Alastair met his nephew? Handsome as the devil, Cambridge educated, and wouldn’t you know, gay and single. I think he’s over there talking to Craig.” 

“What?” he asked, startled, turning back to Elliot. “Léon de Mevius is over there talking to Craig? Or— or did you mean his uncle is?”

Elliot lifted his gaze, cocked an eyebrow at him. “You know of this young man?”

He just stared. “I thought you said no one’s here but us.”

“No one _is_ here but us. I meant your _dad_ is over there talking to Craig.”

“And— I thought you said he didn’t ask anything beyond how everyone was. Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“Over text? Besides, he wasn’t _asking_ about it, it happened to him after all. He just mentioned it. Even if a little pointedly.”

Unbelievable. It was unbelievable. Were things like this supposed to be happening six weeks to a wedding?

“How— how are they still looking for a replacement for Sean?”

“I’m pretty sure your dad’s past that.”

“Is he? Then what’s he talking to Craig about?”

“You feel your dad has nothing to say to Craig besides snooping on you? Must be why he hired Craig to oversee finance for his multibillion dollar real estate empire.” Done with the onions, Elliot uncovered another bowl containing mini beetroot dumplings and set to work on those. And without looking at him, “Zen, child.”

The words had him taking a deep, calming breath. “That’s it. . .” Elliot said, while he remained standing there, feeling no such calm. But after a moment just looked for somewhere to sit on the farm table.

He settled, lowered his gaze to the blue flagstones beneath his feet, and told himself to conserve his energy.

The lunch wasn’t about wedding updates and even Elliot had to know that. His parents needed them for information on their wedding like they needed them for personal financial advice. Leaving dangling the question of what they were all doing there that afternoon—him, Sean, his friends, her friends, his dad—at what was basically short notice.

At first he’d thought maybe his dad wanted a second opinion from his mother, a final yay or nay on his best in show prize for Sean. Until he conceded that his parents didn’t need Sean and him present for that, much less his friends.

Yet his parents didn’t his plan intimate get-togethers purely for the pleasure of each other’s company. Had his dad passed along to his mother some vital information to his mother that he and Sean didn’t know about, and now were both ready to pounce? As with the prenup?

He just didn’t know. His family’s machine was always one step ahead. And since Craig’s main concern over the lunch hadn’t panned out, he was stumped.

His plan therefore that afternoon, hatched while he was getting dressed, was to take the simple route. To not let so much as air between him and Sean. He’d long noticed that even in the midst of their worst pain, Sean tended to have no problem with physical contact. Even if he’d occasionally had to force the issue.

So for today, no cracks between them, no space for anyone to drive an ex-partner through. That was all he had while he continued waiting for Sean to decide how they would move forward together. And he didn’t care what it was, what Sean wanted him to do, say, become— he didn’t care if it entailed getting on his knees before all of them and promising anything. He just wanted him back. And he wanted to hold him and take care of him. And make him laugh until they were old and super tired and did nothing all day but complained about young people.

Raising his gaze toward the bottom of the gardens, he scanned for signs of Craig and his dad. No matter that Craig was keeping things under wraps, there had to be crumbs falling that his dad would have picked up. Maybe the purpose of the day would show in his dad’s body language at least.

For some reason instead, he was was looking at the riotous, colorful assemblage of mariposa lilies running halfway down the back gardens. They ran on either side, hugging the lawns like a pair of rainbow arms. Halfway down they joined up with the rest of the trees and flowers and plants.

His mother’s gardens as a whole were stunning, putting to shame the catalog-inspired, overproduced look of his childhood home’s where his father still reigned supreme. Alastair’s gardens were a vast, precise, cultivated domain, perfect for the many family estate VF or Forbes or Harper’s photoshoots over the years, where makeup assistants trailed hedgerows, smiling and touching the smile of the young Wilson heir, gushing about how cute, how sweet, while his parents pulled on smiles of their own, posing, sipping cocktails, smiling some more. Between those times, the gardens were just. . . restrained. Simply there.

Hers were exactly opposite. Mass after mass of trees, shrubs and bushes, big, crazy flowerbeds crowding bluestone paths that seemed to have no plan or direction, except for the bright green lawn that laid like a cut emerald smack in the middle of it all. 

Assertive, determined, effervescent color, everywhere set free.

He brought his gaze back to the blue flagstone under his loafers. Okay. If he thought he could now look at his mother’s _plants_ and think he was getting glimpses into her psyche, he’d been OD’ing on zen and aromatherapy without realizing.

“Where is she, anyway?” he heard himself asking.

“Upstairs. And I swear she puttin’ on war paint.”

He just shook his head. Returned to looking out for his dad.

“Tell me,” Elliot said. “What’d you see when you look down there?”

He turned and looked at Elliot. Then, baffled, turned back to the gardens. “What am I supposed to—“ Then he blinked, seeing it. And could not believe what he was looking at.

“Oh, God no.”

“Yes, pumpkin. We’re playing Memory. And may it never be said that Cecelia does not know her forms of irony.”

Stunned, he stared at the jewel-blue square of astroturf sitting in the middle of the lawn like an interruption to a thought. A small blue tennis court by all appearances, but on which laid in rows and columns large brown squares of wooden tiles.

How exactly had he missed that. 

“This is evil.”

“Kinda.”

“This is why we’re here, isn’t it? She wants Sean to play this. Like some— dumb frat house— _hazing_ ritual.”

“In which case it’s also kinda sweet, don’tcha think?”

He was nearly speechless. “Are they out of their minds?” he whispered. “What parent _does_ this?”

“Speaking of shade,” Elliot said, finished with tasting whatever was nearest him, now seeking farther afield. “Have you since spoken with our reigning queen of it? Petey’s dishing hot food that you two aren’t even sleeping under the same roof these days. Dirty-dirty, Holden Wilson. _Very_ dirty. How’s mister fucks-a-lot supposed to get his rocks off, huh? Petey’s dreams alone can’t polish that dick.”

He sat staring at the stone floor, then looked at Elliot. “That’s wonderful, Elliot. That’s exactly how we should be handling things as adults.”

“As adults? Please.”

“No, by all means. Let’s not focus on anything real. Like, say, oh I don’t know, actual marriage. Or near disastrous prenups, or even a wedding that stands to throw eggs in our faces because one of the grooms is obviously faking his way through wanting to be there. Suddenly realizing he could do a billion times better than the . . . completely thoughtless, entitled. . . _descendant_ standing next to him. No, let’s not worry about that. Let’s instead talk instead about. . . this,” he finished weakly.

“H, are you high? Your wedding’s gonna be lit, I don’t care what Sean’s drama is. And why are you even talking— Wait, _what?_ ”

And there followed a sudden, diamond-hard silence.

In which Elliot had turned to him, eyes turned into knives.

“He gave you a _prenup?!_ ”

His own eyes now locked down-garden, heart trembling— he hadn’t meant to say that— he didn’t know how to answer.

“H,” Elliot said, eyeballs blown-out and searing holes into his skull. “What the _fuck?_ ”

Still he said nothing.

“ _Holden._ ”

“No, he didn’t give me a prenup,” he said casually, glancing at Elliot. “Of course not. Why would he? He loves me.”

“Then why the fuck did you bring it up?”

Faltering, what little cool he had managed vanishing, he blinking, looking away, past Elliot back into the gardens.

Gently, the bowl cover went back where it had come from. Elliot turned fully to him, as still as a photograph. But Elliot’s brain, the one that had kept them on course through undergrad and grad school amidst their capers, the one that had gotten Elliot a legal job among the top on the West Coast, had fired up. 

And it pushed his heart into a worse state because Elliot’s attention had spent the last few weeks being flagged down. And he could feel inside him how much he didn’t want Elliot to know certain things. For months he had been ragging on Elliot for not paying attention to how his family was acting over Sean, how Sean was in such need of their support and not derision. For months he had thought that was the reason he had wished Elliot would be nicer to Sean.

Now having finally snagged Elliot’s attention. . . he felt a dismay and nervousness even worse than in Lazarov’s shop.

“No way Alastair did that,” Elliot began, in a stream of consciousness tone. “Not considering how far he’s come with Sean. I mean, your dad can be super tone-deaf at times, but not this close to your wedding. Not when he has all his hopes pinned on Sean at this point. I say that as an eyewitness because remember I told you about how he looked at Sean at our meeting after the TMZ article came out. Oh, and please remind me to divulge Sean’s shit attitude when I had him— when we— oh my God,” Elliot breathed, stopping. “She did not.”

Listening along, he’d felt the need to add nothing whatsoever.

“She didn’t.”

And when he still said nothing, Elliot was totally silent for a decent amount of time. Then, slowly, mechanically, Elliot leaned his hip against the table and just looked at him.

“Oh, Jesus,” Elliot said, reverently. “That is merciless. I can only imagine what was in it.” Then, “Sean must have experienced a moon launch.”

“Why do you always think—“

“He didn’t sign it, did he?”

He took a breath. Looked at Elliot. “What am I doing wrong with you?”

“ _Did_ he?”

“No, _of course_ not.”

Elliot’s eyes remained on him, as if to ascertain that he wasn’t just covering for Sean. Then, slowly, Elliot returned to his literal culinary pursuits. But couldn’t seem to immediately resume.

“Wow, that was. . . a little too real, H.”

“Right? You’d think I was getting married or something majorly life changing like that.”

Then at last, down-garden, people appeared.

—

First came Craig and his dad, strolling side by side. But it was too far to detect anything, besides that even from this distance Craig looked very glowy and handsome and that New York must have been pretty good to him. 

Behind them came his mother’s two closest friends. Having all emerged from the same path, he assumed they’d all been on some inspection of his mother’s latest gardening works.

Smiling and flirting with the air itself was Leona, having gotten that supposedly carefree way by surviving a nasty divorce around the same time as his parents. With her was Penelope, another survivor of that era’s Bel Air divorce wave, though less inclined to play the perpetual victim.

Victims of the wreckages of their malignant marriages which he had so detested as a teenager. 

It was that same distaste he expected to feel now. Instead, on seeing both women, a cold sensation swept his insides.

Suddenly, he knew why they were all there— him, Sean, his parents, everyone. And why that game was waiting to be played. 

It wasn’t that his mother was trolling him and Sean. Their entire generation were here to welcome him into their ranks. All here to show him the cold, hard reality about marriage.

He watched the women approach, hardly able to breathe around his squeezing heart.

But why was he surprised. Turning away, he stopped looking. And stopped thinking. Stopped falling into their snares. Hadn’t Kate Hazeltine told him when he began this journey that his dad’s bitterness and rancor came from envy of his relationship with Sean. Jealous of having made it work. He needn’t get distracted now. Even literally playing their game, he wouldn’t play their games with them. He didn’t have to. And he wasn’t about to think anymore about them until he had to be sitting around a table with them.

He started back for the hors d’oeuvres table. Which was how he realized he’d left it in the first place.

Aware now because he was standing a good distance from it at the patio’s edge, starting at Elliot who had turned around and was wordlessly watching him.

Slowly, he returned to the table, sat back down.

Elliot’s eyes never left him. Motionless, mystified. Setting his heart skipping in big, hard beats.

For a long stretch, neither of them spoke, and he couldn’t look. Then, composing himself, he turned and looked at Elliot. Dropping his gaze to the warmers, he asked, “No garlic butter for your dumplings, I take it?”

But Elliot didn’t so much as blink. “What is it, H?”

“I’m fine.”

A beat. “So then relax.”

“I’m pretty relaxed.”

Silence occupied the space between them. As if it too had arrived and was relishing scavenging for tasty nibbles. The more Elliot stood there looking confused, he could _feel_ his heart beating deeper and deeper in his chest, as if getting so, so small. 

Elliot was finally here with him, and paying attention. He could see it fully. And in the same moment, knew why he hadn’t wanted— had needed for Elliot not to know details of how he had treated Sean.

“Holden,” Elliot said, softly, firmly, repeating himself from Lazarov’s shop. “The hard part’s over and you did the right thing.”

Lips tightened, he nodded in a way he hoped was absurdly. “I like to think so.”

“Sean’s just full of self-importance and what you told him must have been a huge blow to his giant jock ego,” Elliot continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I mean, if he smacked Darren up just for talking out of the wrong side of his mouth about you, I can’t imagine the restraint it took to not break Neil in half, whatever Neil said to make him lose it like that. And those are just the ones he could physically get to. So of course he’s gonna need some time to process. It doesn’t mean that your relationship is in jeopardy. Esp— especially since— th— there _was_ nothing. When—“ Elliot’s voice quavered, breaking before he stabilized. “When y— you didn’t _do_ anything. Sean loves you. He just— needs time to accept that. . . you liking the boys. . . isn’t about him.”

He’d been nodding the entire time, trying to make his tightened lips relax, and continued nodding even after Elliot stopped. Needing to, when hearing Elliot stumbling over his words like him was among the hardest things he could deal with right then.

“He can’t possibly be falling apart just because you broke up with him a few times to date other guys.”

“He’s not falling apart,” he said softly, defensively.

Then, for some stupid reason, he turned and looked over his shoulder into the sunroom, thinking he’d suddenly heard his mother in there just as he’d said the words.

Facing forward again, he skimmed past Elliot’s eyes which had stopped searching his face and were now just totally still.

“H,” Elliot said softly. “Did you cheat on him?”

He turned and looked at Elliot.

“I don’t mean when he was— I mean while he was in LA and you two were supposed to be together. Were you messing around on him?”

“ _No,_ why’s everyone saying that?”

“Who’s saying that?”

“Forget it. No, for the last time, the answer is no.”

“Then you’re fine.”

“Which I’m pretty sure is what I just said.”

And they stopped. Elliot stopped.

Keeping his eyes on the approaching parties, who sure were taking their time getting there, he was doing everything to ignore the blank look his best friend was still giving him. To little effect. His heart was in distress.

All he wanted now was for Elliot to reverse this attentiveness. And not look at him in a way he wasn’t prepared to see in Elliot’s eyes.

As an unknown. As a bad guy.

Not in the eyes of the best friend with whom he had made a pact since they were teenagers in college and fell in love with each other’s friendship. Since before Ian burned his heart. When they had pinky-sworn that they would always be decent and have integrity towards the guys they dated. 

Because there were too many callous manipulators out there, too many men who would see your vulnerability and do exactly what they shouldn’t— exploit it until you were on your knees begging for mercy. And so they had entered a pact, to always be on the side of good.

He didn’t need to be told that those were the things going through Elliot’s mind— Elliot’s heart, at that moment. Only a spike on that low, stable frequency would have caused so much stammering. And this look.

“Like I said,” Elliot repeated, slowly. “You’re good.”

He nodded. “Sean just— well, he has a lot to think about. It’s fine.”

Elliot only continued looking at him, as if unsure what to do or say. And he sent him a quick, comfortable, hopefully confident glance. And as he looked, Elliot slowly broke into a big, warm, handsome smile. And it almost made him cry.

“You _are_ fine,” Elliot said warmly. Then, as if trying to cheer up a sad toddler, “Of course you are.” Elliot then brought up his hands, started making pincer fingers, with an obvious intent to tickle. “Yes, you are. . .” he said, stealing closer. “And the sun it out. . . the food is tasty. . . you look adorable in peppermint, just like I sad you would. . . and you’re getting married! All is well in your world! So come here and give daddy a big kiss,” and was now right up against him. “Come here, baby.”

Cutting off laughter, he shrugged off Elliot’s hands, which only served to sharpen Elliot’s resolve. Wiping his hands on a napkin, Elliot tossed it and came for him. “C’mere, baby! C’mere boy!” Laughing, trying to dodge, he stood up, only to find himself wrapped tightly in Elliot’s arms, with Elliot pushing childish kisses into his cheek, smearing him up with garlic and olive oil and cooing ridiculously about being so proud of this baby boy. He couldn’t stop his own stupid laughter. Just then voices from inside the house drew their attention and they both turned to see Petey approaching across the sunroom, and Sean just behind him.

He pulled back from Elliot so fast, he slammed his hip right into the corner of the farm table.

•


	5. Chapter 5

Lunch being at his mother’s house, Petey hadn’t needed to send a car for Sean. Making their simultaneous arrival entirely coincidentally. Unfortunately for Petey. Eyes fastened on him and Elliot as if salvation lay only in reaching them, Petey strode purposefully across the sunroom ahead of Sean in his cute, sexy way. If cute and sexy were the new “hot panic,” that was.

Seeing that Petey had specifically gone to a party he wouldn’t otherwise, he’d been sure Petey’s crush had evolved to manageable levels. Didn’t quite seem the case.

He’d put a mile between him and Elliot, never having taken his eyes off Sean, and right then stood there with a hand pressed into the searing pain in his side, having to ignore Elliot’s attempt at submerging him in a massive eye roll. And watching Petey crossing the threshold, coming in entirely too hot. 

Unable to check his momentum, Petey came right up and was plastered against him before either of them quite knew what was happening. 

Fist tight on his shirt, Petey gave him a smile that was half-grimace, swiping his lips across his cheek, then moved off and did the same for Elliot, then said, “Bye,” and was off the patio. Disappearing toward the side of the house with the plant conservatory.

While Elliot looked on after Petey in amusement, he’d barely taken his attention off Sean, who had slowed to a stop inside the sunroom. Stopped and was looking across to the other side of the room, to where his mother had appeared.

Radiant in a blue-grey silver-embroidered sundress, reminding him, randomly, of the ocean view from Sean’s bedroom, she delicately made her way across the room in silver Keds, like a prima donna put upon. Reaching Sean, she offered a cheek, which Sean politely kissed while answering her greetings after his health, asking some of his own. Straightening, Sean then offered his arm, which she in turn politely took. Together, they continued out onto the patio.

His attention still on Sean, he only noticed Elliot’s keen gaze on them as they passed him. Elliot of course would never mention the prenup, but only because life was unfair and continually cheating him of the steamy soap opera he so dearly wished other people’s lives to be.

Sean stayed by the patio doors while his mother continued towards him, and for a moment he didn’t know where to put his attention. Then he decided to just get her side over with. Whenever she hadn’t seen him in a while she normally did an offhanded visual once-over. In the name of saying she was showing maternal interest in her child, he supposed.

But even with her in front of him it took effort to stop staring at Sean who looked like a big hunk of golden pie over there, in a pewter linen shirt and cream pants. Sean’s tan was darker since Tuesday. Had he been out running longer in the morning sun?

And then he did bring his attention to his mother, because she was standing there holding him and doing nothing else.

Looking down at her, he found her looking at him. Directly into his face, at his eyes. Weird enough for a moment meant to be offhanded, but slowly, he realized that he was looking into her. . . worried eyes?

Blankly returning her stare, he wondered whether he was projecting. He was worried, not her. It was such an out of character look on her that he seemed to be seeing her through the eyes of his teenage self. With that game very calculatedly set out there waiting to be played, and her friends present, this was the very last countenance had expected to see. But that wasn’t all. He then began getting the oddest notion that she held him as though to keep him from flight. Her eyes were very still, then they skipped past him into the distance where his father was approaching on the lawns. Only after a sustained moment did she bring her gaze back to him.

“Hello, darling,” she said, making every effort to sound offhanded. “Don’t you look sweet this afternoon.” She then attempted a smile. But quickly gave up and just kissed his cheek.

Freaked by her bizarre behavior, he couldn’t help shooting a look past her at Elliot. But Elliot had found bruschetta and didn’t even see him looking.

Pulling back, she left him. . . almost reluctantly, but without another word, walking over to the maplewood table to inspect place-settings. Freed now, he immediately looked at Sean, still against the wall with his head lowered and turned away. And had he not seen both their arrivals, he would have sworn Sean and his mother had discussed something beforehand.

But that wasn’t it and he knew it. Seeing each other in the bright sunshine after all the dim things he’d had to tell— he couldn’t even think of Bernal’s with Sean standing in the same space as him— he could almost taste and not just feel the impact of the things he’d done. Why did he believe he still deserved this man.

His knotted stomach pulled tighter. But he waited and didn’t go over there.

Sean then straightened, started over. Reaching him, it took a second, then Sean too looked straight at him, his pale, pretty eyes hard to read.

He took Sean’s hand, and Sean let him. “Hi,” he said to him softly. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Sean answered quietly. Then, with a gentle lean forward, kissed his cheek affectionately. Before Sean could pull away, he turned and kissed his mouth, his breath trembling straight from his heart. Sean let him, even accepting as he touched him with his tongue. He got a gentle lick back, sending the ground under his feet dropping from him. Pulling him closer with the hand he held, he wrapped his arm around his neck and kissed him deeper, losing his breath a little as Sean broke the kiss, and instead momentarily dropped his head to his shoulder. But Sean’s arms slipped around him, strong and tight, and pulled him closer.

And he simply closed his eyes. He was trembling, but Sean was steady as a rock. Their hearts were beating wildly, speaking where their voices couldn’t, each trying to convince the other that things would work out fine. He chose to believe that. He chose to believe it was why Sean was holding him so assuredly. It had to be.

Then Sean pulled away, leaving an arm around him a moment longer to steady him, then was moving off. At the patio’s edge, Sean slid his hands into his pockets and simply took up waiting for his dad’s arrival. Gazing toward the bottom of the gardens like at an end zone on a different planet.

Now he couldn’t move, needing to see what his father would be like toward Sean. Not even for the de Mevius nonsense—his mother would rather wear sackcloth for a year than be associated with a beer dynasty, and they could keep their noble Belgian ancestry—but whether there was something else entirely going on with his parents that had so far been nowhere on his visible spectrum. An underlying reason for this lunch.

“Elliot!”

His mother, now at the hors d’oeuvres table, had come upon the battlefield formerly known as her food warmers. “What on Earth have you done to my appetizers?”

“What’d you mean, Ce?” Elliot asked, batting his long lashes at her.

He turned his attention back to the patio’s edge, where Craig and his dad had arrived. And watched everything, not blinking. Smiling, his dad took Sean by the shoulder and asked some generic questions after his health and all that. Not skimping on eye contact, but then his dad never did. Then his dad gave Sean a hug.

And he stood there drawing a total blank on whether his dad had ever given Sean a hug before. No, of course his dad had. His tension was making him think crazy things. 

But as Alastair pulled back, he saw that his dad looked. . . nervous somehow. It was what had made the hug seem pronounced.

At a loss of what to think, he could only continue watching as, having finished with his dad, Sean gave Craig no acknowledgment whatsoever. Just turned himself away as if the landscape he’d seen many times was suddenly the most interesting thing in sight. Paying no attention to Sean, Craig simply continued onto the patio, going over to his mother, delicately kissing her and telling her she looked breathtaking. 

His father followed, showing no indication of having noticed anything out of the ordinary, while behind him, Leona and Penelope too arrived, noisily greeting everyone in sight.

“Hi, son,” his father said, coming toward him. They hadn’t seen each other since the night of the TMZ article, when he’d walked out after informing him he knew exactly what he was trying to do in sending Sean out there.

The lunch had been such short notice, and he hadn’t planned on seeing Alastair hopefully until the rehearsal dinner or something, that he really hadn’t even thought of what he would say to him. Nothing, he realized now. Nothing was what he wanted to say to him.

So maybe seeing his expression, his dad stopped short of attempting a hug, and just briefly touched his arm. But his dad’s eyes were no less on him that his mother’s. So he blinked and cleared his thoughts. He got a wider, more self-conscious smile.

“Everyone looks great today,” Alastair said, leaving him and moving toward the lunch table. “Should be a fun afternoon.”

— 

His mother hadn’t shifted her attention from Sean.

Eyes, speech and physicality, even the turn of her posture, showed her engrossed with Elliot and Petey, flanking her. But the focal of her attention, the sharpened point of it, obvious to him, was not on his friends.

Trawling his brain for recognition of what might be going on with her, it had gradually come to him. Her discomposure wasn’t worry as he’d initially thought. While it did appear that way, even now at the table, experience had taught him not to presume it was discomfort over the same things as himself, or even his father. What this was, this tension around her, was fully about Sean.

Even having sent out their wedding announcements, even having sprung her prenup trap, even having seen him literally run for help in bringing Anne and Wil to come sit at her table, he didn’t think reality had ever quite set in for his mother. He didn’t think she had believed that a year after being stunned by their engagement, that Sean— just another jock crush her son reliably sustained all the way from his teenage years— would still be sitting there, a handful of weeks to marrying said son.

This sudden sharp outline of emotion she couldn’t seem to accomplish hiding was— bitter realization. And it was making her finally pay attention to Sean.

Somehow, even though his mother had always mostly remained an enigma to him, he could see this very clearly on her.

His father, he could read more easily. Alastair, plainly, was worried. The cause of his nervousness. Worried and hellbent on presenting a casual air. And so had embarked on his annoying manner of making way too much effort over it, the way he sometimes did with Sean. Starting from the day he had brought Sean home to meet him, and without question shocked out of his mind, proceeding to make all that show of giving Sean a tour, not to mention that idiocy about the things he’d overheard coming from his bedroom during his teens. Possibly the most ridiculous bonding attempt of all time.

Well, it was happening again now. Alastair wanting to suffix a reaction from Sean on every little thing he uttered. “Whoa, there. That spritzer’s got alcohol in it, right? Is there gonna be dancing later? Sean, what’d’ya think?”, making Sean chuckle a couple of times, but to him sounding so faked and forced he could have gagged.

Yet his dad’s desperation to keep Sean engaged seemed unusually. . . strained. As though he’d lose Sean’s attention and then it would be gone forever and he would have lost something. A realization so strange—that Alastair would consider Sean as posing any degree of peril for him— that he didn’t know what to do with it.

Because the bottom line fact was that this, all this “love” for Sean, was contingent. All that hugging and kissing and laughing with and showing cute family pictures, and everything else his dad did with Sean, was conditioned. He had no idea whether Sean really got that. Whether Sean understood just how _different_ world views could be. That just because Alastair appeared to accept him didn’t really mean much when there were so many other things at play. 

Craig had said it perfectly, that Sean was a portfolio not market-tested as far as Alastair was concerned. And since his dad was keeping a tight lid on whatever his feelings were on having sent Sean into the lion’s den, he still had no idea where his father was coming down on Sean. None of his friends did either. He was only sure that his dad wasn’t to be trusted.

So this . . . whatever his dad was doing now was frankly confusing to him. A lot of effort when they both knew how Alastair would come down on any choice between Sean or keeping control over his family.

His parents’ unbalanced state should have pleased him. Off-kilter for once when Alastair and Cecelia were always working in tandem. A compensation of whatever their differences that had made them formidable even among their divorced peers. Increase by orders of magnitude when it concerned their only child. But now, finding themselves seemingly on different points on a line. Against him and Sean presenting a united front, no matter how dented. He should have been over the moon. It should have lessened his nervousness about the afternoon.

But it didn’t. And in fact spiked it.

Beneath the table, he’d since groped until he had located Sean’s hand and laced their fingers tight. Hesitating only when Sean turned a look on him as if he had done something particularly unsettling. Sean had looked away as quickly, and tighten as he might, Sean couldn’t seem to respond in kind. It didn’t matter. Sean’s hand was neither cool to his touch nor restless to disengage, only as warm as ever. Like they were back in bed, just the two of them in the world.

Feelings helped along because Sean smelled like vanilla and roses and the ocean. And sand. Ask him what sand smelled like, and he’d just point to Sean. 

Perfumes from a different life.

As for Sean, following their kiss, on taking their places, he had inspected Sean. Sean looked good. A little stressed but good, and right then was giving off a ton of body heat, booming complicated desires. They’d been together long enough, intimately enough, that he could recognize the signs whether he slept on clouds and Sean on earth. And it was beautiful to feel. Because with Sean Jackson, complicated desires were a good thing. It meant hope. He’d won on complicated desires in January, and at this final stretch, he absolutely intended on holding onto anything that would give him an advantage.

“Oh, _goodness,_ ” Leona exclaimed, her voice breaking into his thoughts. She was talking to Petey, seated on her left. “Of course everyone has _secrets._ But everyone knows most secrets are meant to be shared. That’s why they’re _secrets._ ”

Petey quirked him an amused what-the-fuck face from across the table, which he didn’t react to. Leona was very obviously watering the soil for the prying questions to come. 

Despite his complaints to Elliot, there were in fact arrangements of a personal nature his parents would never seek or expect to hear from outside sources, their best hopes at information being simply to wring answers from his friends. 

Everyone could answer or not answer as they pleased. He wasn’t getting involved in any of it. They still had that absurd game to play and he wasn’t about straining himself early.

Eyes on that side of the table, his gaze lingered covertly on Leona and Penelope, sitting side by side next to Petey, and facing Sean and him like interviewers. He could still barely look at them, it was so deeply unnerving. He couldn’t believe how big a pair of assholes his parents were being in setting the afternoon. In having Leona and Penelope present. Refusing to look anymore, he shifted his gaze away.

At this end of the table, Craig sat next to his dad, giving him small encouraging smiles. His dad sat at the end of the table, putting him and his mother at opposite ends of the rectangular table. Which left Elliot on this side with him and Sean, up on Sean’s right, next to his mother. Great, because he didn’t think Sean or Elliot cared to even glance at each other.

All of which put his mother at just the angle to be talking to Elliot, while pretending not to be looking directly at Sean.

He honestly didn’t know whether she expected Sean to sprout wings at some point and finally prove himself not human. So she could go bring in Darren or Quinn Gordon—or anyone else she could get to sign a prenup—into their family instead.

All this because he had stuck with _this one._

And despite his own self-admonition, he found his eyes wanting to go over there again. Toward those women whose marriages he remembered all too well. Marriages he had watched as a teenager turn toxic like his parents’. All of whom, taken together, represented the material and total resentment that he and the rest of the community’s offspring had so deeply harbored. Offspring that included the perennially airheaded Tyler Kerkorian, who had yet at least had enough sense to be the first among them to declare his parents’ marriage a “fucked up sham,” and that his father was gay. But no matter the individual circumstances, all the kids wondering why their parents couldn’t seem to contain the acrimony and bile they let spill around their children. Hadn’t he, growing up, expressed such disdain for it all?

And hadn’t his parents always assured him—his father expressly—that that too would be his fate. A sordid marriage.

So, maybe not so much interviewers as. . . mirrors.

Again he broke his stare, telling himself to stop it. A marriage like any of theirs wasn’t possible between him and Sean. Period. Because they loved each other too much. Because he _liked_ Sean too much. And Sean liked him so much, it had persisted in crumbling his entire sense of self. That was real. Those were the foundations of a true, long lasting relationship. Four very rough years, and he had learned _something,_ thanks very much. And because of it, he and Sean could and would solve any problem that came their way. Including this afternoon.

And thankfully, his friends seemed genuinely happy with him and were rearing to go. He and Sean were all set.

Unaware of the direction of his gaze, he slowly became conscious that his father was looking right at him. Because, apparently, he’d been looking at his dad for a while now.

His dad was staring at him with eyes he couldn’t decipher.

Not having it, in no mood to suddenly find his father mysterious, he looked away. Thankfully, lunch service had begun.

•


	6. Chapter 6

There was, at his mother’s lunches, a longstanding tradition of horse-trading tableware before food was served, and generally making a comedy of errors of it. Her place settings that afternoon were hand-painted gold-leaf, offering many choices, so off everyone went, bargaining for side plates, water cups, side bowls and the like.

He didn’t participate. Lost in thought, however, he eventually glanced to see how Sean taking it, only to find Sean staring at him with a soft-eyed, brain melting smile.

Blinking, he thought, _Oh my God, it’s over._ And sat dumbstruck. 

Sean had done it. Had, somehow, moved past it— flushed away his pain and blown their entire past into the clear blue sky. Ready at last for their next, true chapter together.

Staring at Sean’s lovely smile, he forgot even to breathe. This was . . . 

“Holden, dear.” It was Leona speaking. “Release his hand. He’s been asking to pick up his side bowl.”

Turning to her in confusion, he tried to understand her words, which seemed in a different language. Then he did. And glancing down at their entwined hands, he realized he’d been gripping Sean so hard he’d lost all feeling.

Slowly, he relaxed his hand, and murmuring a thanks, Sean slipped his free and picked up his side bowl. Then, much to his surprise, Sean handed off the bowl to Elliot, who passed it to his mother. Setting it next to her water cup, she picked up and handed to Elliot her small side plate, which similarly found its way over to Sean’s place setting.

His heart thudded. Wait, what had just happened? Who had initiated the exchange, his mother or Sean? Was it some kind of truce? Or a threat? How had he missed all this? Neither Sean nor his mother were exchanging pleasantries following the exchange, even while the table was noisy with the levity. 

Stealing a look at Craig for context got him nothing, as Craig was trying to make sure his mother got some pale blue side plate because it matched her dress. And Leona was holding Sean’s attention, loudly coordinating so that Sean could get the most benefit of the exchanges, for whatever reason. 

Finally, it all died down and the staff appeared to start service. And that took up the next few minutes.

Out of curiosity, he looked over his own place settings, but couldn’t tell whether any of it had been replaced. “Holden. . .” Penelope very knowingly called, and he lifted his gaze to her and quickly said, “I’m fine, I’m okay, thanks.” And she gave him a still very knowing, tightlipped, beaming smile.

“Look at you,” she cooed, while her food was being served— _Please don’t say it,_ he thought— “all grown up and ready for marriage.”

He somehow didn’t loudly sigh.

“So,” Alastair grandly intervened, officially kicking off the afternoon. He noticed that his father’s hands were in his lap under the table as they were being served, and he could tell his fingers were interlocked. It was a sign of concern in his father. “Where’s everyone on wedding arrangements? Elliot?”

“We have our boutiques selected and are just starting with fittings.”

“Excellent,” Alastair said. “Perfect timing.”

“And yesterday,” Elliot smoothly went on, leaving no room for Sean and Davey’s God only knew at what status trip to England to come up, “we went over those beastly Soirée checklists for the third time. Please, everyone, remind me to elope when it’s my turn.”

Leona waved a dismissive hand. “You’re complaining about prepared checklists. In our day we had to put those things together ourselves _and_ sit face to face with the vendors. You don’t know beastly. They should have given us masters degrees afterward.”

“Oh, we had fun doing it,” said Petey, smoothing things over. “And don’t talk of eloping. Cecelia will die.”

“Thank you, Jaime. You don’t know what happens to my heart when I hear that word.”

Having lost Sean’s hand, he’d slid his foot around Sean’s and had their legs glued together. Now he turned to Sean and asked, “You wanna elope?”

In the midst of the laughter around the table, he saw that Sean didn’t quite smile even.

“Not to worry, Ce,” Elliot said. “Everything’s on course. Their color scheme is to die for, the flowers, photography, their wine selection, orchestra, everything. The Spaniards at InterContinental are literally rearing on Andalusians. Once the grooms see the venue, and we’re all fitted for our tuxes, we’ll be ready to welcome you all to Holden and Sean’s grand opening. It’ll be like giving birth. Once you see that beautiful face, all pains are forgotten.”

“Or so they tell you,” Alastair said.

Laughter once more circled the table. But not his mother’s or Sean’s. And he didn’t even know what the joke was.

“Might I ask where you’re getting your tuxes, Elliot?”

“No sir, you may not. Holden and I don’t need you up in there trying to look prettier than us. You know once you show up they’ll fall all over themselves showing you their secret royal stash and you’ll show up to the wedding looking like the Prince of Wales. Then where would we be.”

Alastair chuckled. “Noted.” Then, “Sean? Might we know who’ll be dressing you and your best man? Or is that also a state secret.”

“My buddy Davey and I are going to England,” Sean said.

He could have snorted. Buddy? Try ride or die. Or maybe Sean didn’t know what that was.

“And your tailors?”

“Uh,” Sean said, clearly trying to remember. “A couple of shops on Savile Row.”

“That’s. . . wonderful,” his mother said, sounding wondered. “Your choice?”

“Nah, can’t take the credit. It’s all Davey’s idea.”

Head tilted, his mother sat staring at Sean as if at an alien creature. Then she took a long, silent breath and looked away, at Penelope, who then continued the inquiry.

For his mother, it was about publicity. Image and control of it. With Penelope as proxy, they therefore began hearing a lament about the lack of anything about their engagement in the media, seeing as Sean and him were both “gay icons”, there would have been so much opportunity for advocacy through. . . he wasn’t really even sure what she said next, pimping themselves or something.

“I mean, not a single publication since Forbes,” she cried, skipping TMZ, he supposed. “Holden, I thought you of all people.”

“They’ve got all sorts of things scheduled,” his mother slathered on. “Don’t you, darling?”

While his friends chimed in, assuring his mother of all the wonderful things coming, he stayed out of it, maintaining a blatant refusal to participate in the bullshit.

“Including, I’m told,” his dad said. “Some kind of event David is throwing? Though, since David explicitly told me I’m not invited, I’m assuming it’s more of the non-parental, not for general consumption type of publicity.”

“Oh, there’ll be plenty of daddies there,” Petey said. “Just not of the respectable variety. David, as you know, is only trying to preserve your reputation.”

Alastair smiled. “You may tell your boss I appreciate that, Petey.”

Without meaning to, he found himself cutting his father a look, astounded at the audacity. The certified philanderer acting like a sanctified virgin. What did it even take to be that big a hypocrite. No need even to check his mother’s reaction, and in fact across decades, he could feel her disdain.

“A David Geffen party,” Leona said, laughing. “Oh, my.”

Beside him, Sean tightened. Also the server had reached them, and he began putting in his order more audibly than necessary, in a future attempt to drown the discussion of an event he had failed to mention.

“Sean,” his mother said, slightly raising her voice. “Have you met David?”

There was a heavy glob of silence. Only his and the server’s voices softly going.

“Uh, no. Just, uh, read up on him last year when Holden put some literature in my reading list.”

“Really!” exclaimed Leona. “How on earth is that possible! Everyone’s heard of David Geffen! He’s a living legend, even in the non-LGBT world. How have you never heard of him? Surely the NFL isn’t _that_ insular a world.”

Craig said, “I’d say it just depends on what’s important to you. Even in the gay community there are plenty of people who’ve never heard of him.”

“Tons,” his father said, smiling at the server who was loading him up with honey buttered lobster. “Sean is in by no means an unusual position.”

Chin propped on her fingers, his mother was simply watching in their direction.

“Well, I imagine Sean is in for an interesting time, then,” said Leona.

“It’s just nice to know,” said Penelope, “that he’s publicly getting behind them. No matter his. . . style or excesses.”

Sean was frowning, straining to listen. Not obviously, but he could feel it. And if his friends noticed that the Geffen thing had been sprung on Sean, exposing that he’d failed to mention it, they, lively around the table on full parental duty, gave no indication. For a quick moment he thought to press Petey for details, knowing Petey would divulge if his mother wanted to know.

But he came to his senses just as quickly. He’d be nuts to ask for answers he wasn’t prepared for. If Sean asked he’d just tell him the truth that he didn’t know and that it was out of his hands. And if Sean said no, then they wouldn’t do it and his dad could make whatever excuse to Geffen.

Then his mother lowered her arm, sitting back as she was served and looking away, and seemed quite done with them.

“And your engagement photos,” Penelope carried on for her, bordering on sounding scandalized now. “I assume those you’ll at least be publishing?”

When the question spiraled into a well of silence, he realized that his friends couldn’t take the questions because they didn’t know either, and shook his head.

“What!” Petey gasped, looking horrified, and not taking the hint when he sent him a glare. “I didn’t know that! Holden, are you crazy? Of course we’re going to publish! Those photos are the linchpin of your brand!” Petey swallowed, spiraling. “Jesus, _Holden,_ are you well? We need to—” and Petey abruptly stopped.

So abruptly that his dad didn’t realize and simply continued the conversation, asking whether he’d chosen to retain Cubierta, his mother’s PR firm, after all. Craig knew those answers and he let him deal with it. Checking to see what had brought Petey to a stop, he wasn’t surprised to see Petey in a hard flush, sending repeated glances their way. Meaning Sean had probably made eye contact. Thankfully stopping any more talk of engagement photos.

Next to them, he noticed Elliot having called the server back for an additional helping of the super fluffy cranberry-saffron mashed potatoes. Not yet having eating the serving on his plate, mind. 

He leaned over to Sean. “You ever had those?” he asked softly, not wanting everyone involved.

Sean gave no answer, still looking at his plate and a little like he was still trying to decide if he should know David Geffen. After a moment, that felt like an eternity, with a slight glance at him, Sean shook his head.

“Really? Well, they’re almost too good for words. As long as Elliot’s at the table, we get them no matter the dish being served because they make Elliot cry and my mother finds that so adorable. It’s her recipe. Elliot says it’s an allergic reaction to the saffron but then why eat it, right? Anyway, they’re pretty good.”

He first heard his father’s laughter, then everyone else’s, and caught by surprise, glanced around. But looking at Sean again, he’d barely gotten a pull of Sean’s lips.

“Will you be having any?” he asked him directly, quietly, needing a reaction.

He didn’t immediately get one. “Sean,” Leona calling, “you _have_ been very quiet all afternoon,” to which neither of them replied, and somewhere he heard Craig obliging her.

Sean glanced at him and said softly, “Yeah, maybe I will.”

Taking in Sean’s flushed face, his shy eyes, seeing his whole world in them, he softly asked back, “Maybe you’ll what?”

Sean snorted softly in amusement, then met his eyes properly for the first time since they’d sat down. “Maybe I’ll have some.”

Satisfied, he waited while Sean got his service, while under the table he shifted his foot a little more inside. “Have as much as you like,” he whispered sideways to him, when the server left. Leaning in, turning his face so he could see his eyes, he added, “Anytime, anywhere. And however you want. I promised Allison I would always accept a safe word.”

Sean finally, finally broke into soft laughter. Then casting him a look, a lingering warm one, picked up his cutlery and started in on his lunch.

“Great,” Alastair said, and when he glanced at him, saw him picking up his cultery as well but seemingly having spoke at a prompt from nothing whatsoever. Beaming a big, strained smile at him. “Wonderful.”

He cast a look at Craig, who also had started eating, but head down, had a big smile on his face.

“Sean, I’m forever asking you what life is like in the NFL and never getting a real answer.” Leona’s eyes were on Sean, flirtatiously. “Why is that?”

And love him to literal distraction, he didn’t so much as glance over. Sean was on his own with that.

Then, under the table, the foot he’d locked his around shifted closer, leg and all, and he felt Sean ever so slightly relaxing.

And that was basically it for him. He closed his eyes momentarily to thank whatever and whomever, and proceeded to blank the rest of the meal.

•


	7. Chapter 7

So maybe he’d called his afternoon a win a little too early.

Poised over the big wooden Memory tiles, he was pretty much frozen in place, having an incredibly scattered afternoon. This was _not_ how he remembered this game feeling growing up. Hell, not even two years ago.

With him on the blue astroturf were Petey and Elliot, as still as he was, all three of them standing over the measly matching pair of tiles they had managed to overturn as a team.

“It’s that one,” Petey insisted, pointing.

“Nope,” Elliot said. And so they remained.

Long turning stick in hand, suspended in their search for a matching third tile. Him standing there feeling as if he could only breathe because the stick was a tube allowing oxygen straight into his chest.

As a teenager, the game used to feel seriously tacky, watching the adults carry on in their obvious way in playing a game clearly meant as a stand-in for real life maneuvers. All the snide, catty remarks flowing freely with the booze, comments flipping as often as tiles about who recalled what about whom, and the accompanying stinging laughter. 

After his and Sean’s footsie-ing, he’d stopped being bothered about this part of the afternoon, assuming when the time came he’d be up here dismissively. 

Not in terror of the slightest move.

The game entailed simply flipping over matching tiles in sets of three. Arranged in diagonals, L-shapes or simple straight lines, done by the outgoing team under the observation of the incoming one. So, easy enough since you were actually looking while the tiles were being set.

Hadn’t helped them one bit. Hadn’t helped them one bit. The other teams—his mother and her friends; Sean, Craig and his dad—had turned over matching tiles the requisite five times in a row before time was called. They’d managed twice. 

Presently, everyone was in conversation in lawn chairs around the game area, sipping spritzers and iced teas while watching them.

“I’ll remember in a minute,” Elliot murmured.

But Elliot, though proving their savior, was shedding concentration amid trying to ignore his unexpected state of self-consciousness, and Petey’s inability to dissemble. Half the time, like now, Petey’s eyes were at the lawn chairs, where he was sure it wasn’t his dad receiving an eyefucking.

“Petey,” he whispered, startling Petey back, who then gently tightened his lips and gave him a forlorn look.

This game, which had only ever been annoying, had suddenly turned harrowing watching Sean at it. Breezing through tiles in easy concentration and with apparent total recall as if retaining details of misdirection was basic life skills.

Speechless at their table the first time Sean was up, he’d turned and looked at Elliot, who’d silently cocked an eyebrow and continued sipping his mojito. Leona and Penelope had carried on relentlessly about how impressive Sean’s memory and good heavens who would want to be on the receiving end of _that._ His mother had shown no reaction, just seeming a bit more fidgety than he could recall. He hadn’t bother checking what his dad might think.

Nonetheless, for his parents there was no diminishing their enjoyment of the game, continuing their tradition of making remarks that were clearly in reference to life and not the game. Even while Sean was playing. That first round, he’d sat there, heart contracting in the thick of their verbal slings.

“There is nothing more satisfying,” Elliot had softly said, “than Bel Air shade.”

While he had just been wondering how this was fair. Why they thought this was okay. 

“You know,” Elliot had said in undertones, while Petey stared at Sean on the game area like a hawk watching a baby chick. “It really is a shame that Sean and Cecelia are at such loggerheads. Because in terms of out shading an opponent, they are practically the same person. Girlfriend is barely breaking a sweat out there, meanwhile your mother is seriously piling it on.”

It had been so ludicrous a remark he hadn’t bothered replying. But now it was their turn and once more, disaster. He didn’t want to retain a goddamned thing and Elliot wasn’t going to be able to carry his and Petey’s burden. They were going to lose spectacularly while Sean sat on the sidelines knowing exactly why.

“Try that one,” Petey suddenly said.

And he quickly turned the tile over before anyone could reconsider. It proved correct.

Petey elegantly snapped his fingers, declaring them down but not out. And waiting for his mother’s team before they reset the board, he wished he could get that in writing.

—

In its final round of play, Alastair explained to him, while they watched Holden’s team fail once more, the game of Memory increased its matched set from three to five, and required that a champion from each team be chosen to play in shorter timeframes. From his team it was going to be him, Cecelia from hers, and Elliot from Holden’s. Clearly.

At their table awaiting their last round, he was listening to Alastair speaking, but mostly wathcing his chilled hibiscus tea perspiring down his hand.

Whatever he had expected from that afternoon, it certainly hadn’t been this.

He’d come prepared to play it cool with Holden’s parents. Find a way to look his future parents-in-law in the eyes despite realizing things about their son he found difficult to reconcile. Awareness at screaming heights, he honestly didn’t even know how he had faced Alastair at the patio, or Cecelia in her sunroom. Or Holden at all.

But there was no dodging reality or responsibility, not anymore, so he had pulled it together and got it done. 

But he had not been prepared for this. . . performance. This freaky rich people game of. . . tracking beef. After a year of hanging with them, he’d thought he’d seen it all. What had he known. 

Alastair and Cecelia had brought him there that afternoon as a welcome mat to their son. Privately, to their inner world. To see how they all rolled—the edged laughter, the snark, the cynicism, the bitter expectations of inevitability. Bringing back memories of the first time he’d met Cecelia, holding court poolside at the Bel Air Country Club. An entourage of hangers-on fawning and laughing at everything she and her friends had to say. He remembered well, the discussion about some woman named Lacey and her prenup demolishing divorce moves. Now he understood that they considered her a lifetime achievement winner extraordinare in _that_ game of memory.

This game, and their looser interaction with him over it, was the door really, truly opening one year later. And he got that.

But something more was happening.

He didn’t think that either of Holden’s parents had foreseen just how big their welcome mat was, and, as far as he could tell, seemed despairing to also find themselves standing on it.

Cecelia, right from the lunch, was bristling. At first he’d thought it was him—that she didn’t want him in her family had never been an obfuscation. So sitting at her lunch table, he’d thought she was just having difficulty finding ways to tolerate his presence, the reality of their wedding so close at hand.

But here, now, he saw that he had been promoting himself. He didn’t, actually, factor into her irritation at all. Simply because he was not, no matter what he might think, a part of her family to begin with. Right now, he was just some man her son had brought in, sitting in her back gardens sipping tea on a Sunday afternoon.

Cecelia’s pique was solely toward her men. At Alastair and Holden.

Toward Holden, he could read her logic. Holden was a mess out there. Holden whose memory was normally perfectly fine, if not exceptional, now stuck on those easy tiles, like a mint green buck stuck before headlights. 

Who the hell wore mint green with that complexion, had been his initial thought on seeing Holden, and had remained his thought for the proceeding hours. How soft the material had felt brushing against his arm, trying all he could not to look down Holden’s navy polo, while visualizing how the seams of the pants had looked brushing Holden’s pale ankles, especially with Holden’s enormous foot trying to have sex with his. He didn’t even need to go into how good Holden smelled.

So that had been the best his great firewall against not thinking with his heart had been able to do for him during lunch.

And now it made for, well, a beautiful display of nerves. Holden approaching the tiles as if under each lay a scorpion about to take him out. They had ended up just running out the clock on a few rounds. And Cecelia looked brittle over it.

As for toward Alastair, that, he couldn’t figure out. But he had wandered through the chill air wafting their way enough times with his own mother and father to recognize those feelings a mile away.

As for Alastair. Like his son, Holden’s father had always been easy to read, and Alastair was very sad. Showing a sorrow he remembered only seeing in the days after their return from Johnston, when Alastair had not needed being told that he was losing his son. Well, he could understand. This matter with Holden’s exes and the shitty TMZ article had erased nearly all of Alastair’s progress with Holden. In fact, he’d say it had erased it all. There was lack of. . . emotion from Holden toward Alastair that was. . . not forced. Sitting next to him, Holden had of course been nervous toward him. But toward Alastair, there had been a coolness that was. . . not good. And Alastair felt it.

Watching Holden’s lackluster performance at their cutthroat game, Alastair most of the time tipped and stared into his glass of spritzer instead, as if a more confident version of his son’s game lay in there, a few times catching his eyes and giving him a big smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just having a bad day, I guess,” or “He’ll find his feet.”

Were he not who he was, he would have told his future father-in-law, _It’s just a game._ But he was Sean Jackson, and he knew what games meant to people. On field, off field, in bed, in life. And when rules had been set, for decades, for generations, failing at those games became failing at life.

Suddenly, Alastair was speaking. 

“Remember when Holden first brought you home, Sean? How nervous he was?” Softly, Alastair snorted. “The gall on that boy. Getting engaged and letting his mother and me find out practically on social media.”

_Well,_ he thought, _practically._ Holden had told him that some person Alastair “had” at Harry Winston had informed his family the moment he had gone in asking to see engagement rings.

“Out there in the world,” Alastair said, “he does right by total strangers without breaking a sweat. But when it comes to his family, who love and know him the most, he gets nervous.”

Alastair fell silent, then smiled across at him. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Sean. I’m glad it was you. Boy, am I glad.”

“Thank you, Al,” he said, a little more emotionally than he would have liked. “I appreciate that.”

And then Craig, a little to his left at the round table, was smiling his indecipherable smile at him. 

When they had first sat down, he’d gone over the list of platitudes he’d prepared to tap back any questions about the last couple of weeks. Especially believing that Craig would have submitted some kind of classified report to Alastair, to which he’d have to answer questions. Nothing. There had been absolutely nothing about it. 

They’d sat, Craig, cool and zipped, had only mentioned to Alastair how well he and Holden had done in their capacity as a new philanthropy couple, and Alastair, eyes on his son playing, had gently nodded, once. “So I heard,” Alastair had quietly said. And that had been that.

No questions about ex-boyfriends, how he had found it, whether there might be anything straggling from their meeting in his study. Apparently for Alastair, it seemed enough that he had simply done it. Fine by him.

He had no doubts that he and Alastair understood each other. And that they were truly allies in this game of life.

That didn’t, however, make him foolish enough to compare the like of a potential son-in-law to the love of a son. 

But, ultimately, he _was_ just a stranger Holden had met four years ago. One who at that moment, was making the child he and his wife had spent years grooming look like he didn’t belong on their literal playing field. Patently failing at games he and Holden’s mother could effortlessly play.

And what wasn’t working for him, Alastair had shown no hesitation in replacing. Beau, after all, was wife number, what. . . three?

—

Soon it was final round, and while everyone sat refreshing, him, Cecelia and Elliot occupied the posh blue astroturf.

Cecelia was to go first, and simply stepped onto the game area and began effortlessly flipping matching tiles. Her memory was near flawless. No matter how intricate or hidden the patterns, she just went at it like a machine. When Penelope called time, she had scored more than she had working in a team.

From the sidelines, her friends whistled and applauded, while her ex-husband slowly shook his head, with a conceding smile.

“Should I be calling my lawyer?” Alastair called to her. “Last time you were on this good a winning streak, I had a headache for eight months reading fine print.”

Cecelia broke into genuine laughter, as she and Elliot reset the tiles, seemingly amused despite herself, and disturbing him because he was sure Alastair was referring to their divorce. Easily confirmed by the look of utter disgust on Holden’s face.

But next was his turn, and for some reason, as he bent to the tiles right before Leona was to start the clock, he first looked up at her. And found her eyes on him.

Without so much as a blink, she smiled at him.

It completely shattered his concentration. She was Holden with female eyes and hair and mouth when she smiled, and it felt nothing short of the sublime. Leona called the start of time and he lowered his head to his turning stick and for a really long time, couldn’t bring himself back to the moment to even move. 

Elliot broke into loud, helpless laughter that had him turning away to regain control of himself. 

From the corner of his eye, he saw Holden, arms on his knees, seated forward in his chair, staring so hard at them it was a miracle the ground beneath them didn’t break open and just end everything.

He had recovered and rallied, turning over tiles, and when it was all over he came in a matched set behind Cecelia, putting Elliot and Holden’s team in third place.

His performance got him cheers from her friends, praise from Alastair, and Holden standing up and coming over to first glue himself to him, then kind of paw at him, then start kissing his face. It was the last thing he expected, but why was he surprised, when with Holden Wilson, that would make it par for the course. 

—

Cecelia had a jaw dropping plant conservatory attached to the west side of her mansion. And it was there, Leona kindly informed him, he could find Holden.

He hadn’t asked. Nor had he been searching for Holden. In fact he was about to leave. It had been a long fucking day and it was set to be an even longer week.

“Thanks,” he said to Leona, waiting as she went ahead of him in the same direction.

With the afternoon officially over, no one was leaving but him. They’d all wandered in slow waves toward the conservatory, from where he expected they would go see her other projects as desired. Cecelia was gifted enough to have made a career of anything requiring physical manipulation, whether organic or inorganic. A trait she had spectacularly failed to pass on to her son. Today, though, no tours for him, he was just looking to say goodbye.

The conservatory opened out to her back gardens from that side, but the sunroom also provided a wide, gorgeous blue tiled hallway access. Still inside the hallway, he watched Leona pass into the conservatory, then, thankfully, Cecelia emerging.

Or maybe not so thankfully. It was bad enough that her prenup surprise still stung, not about to add to it by letting himself blush over her so effortlessly psyching him out on the game area, he kept thoughts of his harsh looking week front and center. 

But whatever she had wanted to see from this afternoon, she no doubt had.

“Sean, you’re not leaving yet, are you?” she asked, in tones full of regret, yet somehow always making him feel she felt the exact opposite.

“Yeah,” he said apologetically. “Long week ahead.”

“Oprah Winfrey,” she said.

Her eyes on him, always direct, were cool and cordial. And, aside from her brief play earlier, always. And it was always very hard for him, to see her cool looks at him.

Because when she looked at him like this, with her eyes so like Holden’s, it was like getting a genuinely cool response from Holden. Something he had never experienced. And it hurt like a brand to his chest. The answer to why her cool affected him so much more deeply than Alastair’s sound and fury. 

Despite his heartache, making him grateful that while he and Holden could fight and carry on, it was always in the context of their love. That he had never felt a fear that Holden could ever look at him like this.

Waiting for an answer, she politely tipped her head.

“Yeah,” he said, closing his thoughts like drawing shades against an intruder. “She’s a tough one.”

“Just sit your spine up,” she said causally, as dismissive as Holden on momentous things that paralyzed other people. “She’s not the enemy.”

His eyes flew to her, as much as he tried not to have it happen. _Should_ he read into that? He murmured a thanks.

And now she was looking at him. No smiles, no pretending she wasn’t.

And he stood there, waiting. He had come expecting this, knowing something was going to happen. He just wished she’d get it over with.

She said, “Sean, it’s been a while since you and I spent time alone together. It seems almost criminal, seeing how close you are to becoming a new addition to the family.”

_However long that may last._

He all but heard it. He knew the phrase she’d used, and why, how Alastair had used it to introduce his latest mistress to his family.

“How about we catch dinner next week?”

“I’d love to.” He’d said it with strength in his voice. “But I got a busy week ahead and I’m not free till after Thursday.”

“Perfect. I’ll reach you Thursday, then.”

He nodded.

Then, in a most innocent display, she extended a finger sideways, toward her conservatory. 

“Holden’s inside. Did you want to say goodbye?”

“I’ll see him later.” A balls-out stretching of the truth.

“All right then.”

And she leaned forward and air kissed him.

“Have a good evening, Sean, and thank you for coming.”

“Thanks for having me,” he said firmly. “It was really a pleasure. I can’t find Alastair anywhere. Could you let him know for me.”

“Of course.” With that, she left the hallway and returned to her conservatory.

From inside the conservatory, he heard Holden’s voice, low and authoritative, over something. Had he once thought six months’ salary? There were times he’d give a couple years’ worth to have Holden put his arm around him and stand between him and the world.

Quietly, he left the hallway.

•


End file.
